


Unreliable Narrative

by runrarebit



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: Child Abuse, Creepy, Dark, Dubious Consent, Emotional Manipulation, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/M, Gaslighting, Impaired empathy, Incest, M/M, Misogyny, Navel-Gazing, Past Sexual Abuse, Sexual Dysfunction, Social dysfunction, Somnophilia, Unreliable Narrator, allusions to necrophilia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-07
Updated: 2017-09-07
Packaged: 2018-12-24 23:58:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12023826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/runrarebit/pseuds/runrarebit
Summary: Mark Jefferson reflecting on events before he goes to see Nathan the last time.





	Unreliable Narrative

It was unfortunate that things had come to a head so soon. He had hoped for at least several months, if not years’, more work with his current setup before he had to cut his losses and move on. It is unlikely that he will be able to set up another Dark Room in Arcadia Bay so he will have to resign his position at Blackwell and move on to a different town; the loss of his equipment a sting, not to mention the unlikeliness of finding another with the resources and weaknesses of Nathan to supply his needs. He will have to make do; perhaps unload some of his other private portfolios anonymously to raise the cash himself.

It is galling to think that perhaps Nathan had been a mistake; even if his family wealth had bought equipment and privacy. Not a mistake in the short term, where the boy had fulfilled his role as required, but the damage and emotional neediness that made him so easy to manipulate also made him unstable, unreliable and ultimately a liability. Of course at the same time it made him the perfect scapegoat, a way to absolve himself of blame, but it’s still a setback. 

The problem has always been the boy’s possessiveness, his jealousy. Although perhaps that had been his own problem, his own miscalculation. Nathan’s desire for intimacy, the touch starvation he’d endured, his issues with older male authority figures and his barely concealed homosexuality had made fostering a sexual relationship with the boy the obvious way to manipulate him to his ends, but in doing so he had lead Nathan to believe the boy had a claim on him.

In many ways it had been distasteful, not the least in that he preferred female flesh -though a man does not have to be sexually attracted to silicone to make use of a fleshlight- but in others Nathan had been more accommodating than previous lovers. He was used to passivity, to being drugged into compliance.

There was not even the construct of socially defined guilt tainting his use of the originally underage boy. Nathan had been no innocent, no virgin defiled, whatever purity he may have been born with (though boys were born with so much less than girls) had been corrupted long before he got his hands on him. 

A mother with unacknowledged and untreated postpartum depression who couldn’t even touch her youngest child. A father who clung to the old notions of chauvinistic masculinity and didn’t believe in coddling (or even comforting) his vulnerable son. A sister with a stronger personality who saw only part of the picture of systematic emotional and psychological abuse her younger brother was being subjected to. A grandfather who had both provided the only physical comfort the boy had ever received as well as taking sexual advantage of him. That very same grandfather on who’s death the grief stricken and traumatised boy had disclosed the abuse to his father only to be shuffled into the care of well-paid psychological “professionals” who had diagnosed and drugged and declared him delusional to the point he no longer trusted his own experiences, while creating a narrative of a disturbed boy whose disclosures were not to be believed if he ever let slip any of the dysfunction rampant in the Prescott family. 

If he cared to he could send Sean Prescott flowers for the perfect tool he’d turned Nathan into.

A little bit of attention, a little bit of petting, the praise of his work; twisted, agonised, confined and so obviously a representation of how the boy felt in himself; and Nathan was his. He’d needed to be gentle at first, had framed the Dark Room as a space for them both to work without mentioning his magnum opus, had talked about controlled light and shade and wanting a space to be able to shoot Nathan himself without intruders. The boy had been flattered at the idea of being a subject, being worthy to stand in front of the camera.

He’d asked if Nathan knew anywhere they could use and had been lead out to the old storm shelter, had been forced to hold the boy as he cried and whimpered about what his grandfather used to do to him out there before one of his fits had come over him. Well conditioned self doubt had him clawing at himself, calling himself names and a liar and attention seeking. All it took was sweet words and comfort and belief and the Dark Room, Nathan, had been his.

There had been a price to pay in kisses and gentle touches, and the tight place between Nathan’s legs, but the boy had let him lead, let him stay in control and do what he had to to make it bearable. 

He’d always been disgusted with girls who clung or moaned or clenched at him when they were being fucked. It revolted him, turned him off, every sign of pleasure they showed made him despise them, made him want to wrap his hands around their throats or beat in their faces. It was vulgar, a sign of something foul and corrupt inside of them leaking out. He’d rather them still and silent, unaware and compliant. Innocent.

When he wanted to fuck it was always easy enough to find a girl blackout drunk or high or to slip them something and slip away with their limp, warm bodies to take what he needed. It was harder the few times he tried to foster a relationship, and more than once he’d been called a freak and a pervert, and more than once his control had slipped and he’d struck out, but they’d been drunks and sluts and junkies and the police would never believe them if they spoke out. 

Nathan, no stranger to medication and compliance, had been understanding when he’d explained what he liked. They boy had looked up at him with doe eyed trust and let him slip the needle inside, let him pump drugs into his bloodstream until he was still and soft, a doll to use as required.

There were folders of pictures of Nathan in that state, nowhere near as compelling or artistic as the girls, but useful practise and a way to take the edge off when his other desires had started to cloud his mind. The pictures were commercially viable in their way, artistic shots of a beautiful naked boy on the cusp of adulthood, marred by trackmarks and self mutilation. Cuts and bruises and cigarette burns and the words he’d gouged into his upper thighs. “Shutupshutupshutupshutup” and “liar” and “stupidboy” and “crazy” and “psycho” and “deserved it” and “we’re all already dead.” 

He felt little sentimental attachment to the photos so there would be nothing to stop him from selling them off to the sort of “discerning collector” who enjoyed the that kind of thing once Nathan was disposed of and no longer able to become upset by the perceived rejection.

Perhaps it had all gone to shit with Rachel, or perhaps when Nathan had started self-medicating on top of the drugs being pumped into him by psychiatrists and himself, or perhaps when the boy had realised that the very same drugs could be used to trade for friendship and popularity.

Rachel was different, he wasn’t sure how. She wasn’t some needy slut whose pleasure made his skin crawl. She was compelling and interesting and almost made him want something he’d long since given up on. Nathan even liked her, except Nathan was also jealous. 

By that point the boy was completely in love with him, unstable, unhappy, having odd fits and nightmares and going off about the world ending in a storm and it was all becoming tiresome. Every now and then he’d had to be intimate with the boy without the amnesiac effect of the drugs or else Nathan became fretful and convinced he no longer cared. So he’d have to touch him or kiss him or, God forbid, let the boy suck him off which was a grotesque thing for anyone to do willingly. Rachel had distracted him though, and he hadn’t spent enough time petting away Nathan’s insecurities.

By then he’d shown the boy the folders containing his magnum opus, but framed it as if the models had been willing. At the start he had expected Nathan and his morbid tastes to be more aligned with his own interests, but Nathan was more masochistic than he had expected, his interest in darker subject matter almost solely a way he was trying to purge himself of his festering psychological wounds, and had little interest in reducing anyone else to what he felt reduced to.

It had all gone wrong when he’d taken Rachel to the Dark Room. He had wanted to shoot her alive and conscious, to see if he could find in her something equal to what he found in the subjects in his red folders. She had wanted a portfolio, interested in becoming a professional model. She could have done it, she had that special something about her. It had started with her posing for him, had degenerated into kissing, his hands under her clothes. He’d felt alive, excited, none of what he normally felt in such a situation, and then Nathan had walked in.

The boy had thrown an absolute jealous fit, crying, calling them both names, and he’d been so angry he’d lashed out, slammed his fist into Nathan’s diaphragm so he collapsed breathless to the floor. Then Rachel had started up, rushing concerned to her so-called-friend’s side and looking up at him as if he was a freak and he’d just lost what remained of his temper. All the soft, sweet feelings Rachel had awoken in him had turned cold and disgusted.

He’d hit her, drugged her, drugged Nathan when he’d come crawling to her defence. 

Rachel had become part of his magnum opus, no longer the girl he’d hung his hopes on, and when she came round spitting and screaming and accusing him of all manner of things he’d slipped up dosing her again and she’d died. He’d taken her to the junkyard to bury, some impulse making him drag Nathan along so he could pose them both, both trash where they belonged.

The amnesiac effects of the drugs in Nathan’s system, both prescribed and otherwise, combined with his emotional dependence had made it easy to spin a tale when the boy had come round. He’d told him the truth, in part, that the subjects in the red folders were not always willing or aware of what was happening but framed the narrative as if they’d discussed it the night before and that Nathan had wanted to participate. He’d said that Nathan had suggested Rachel, as a partygoer and drug user as well as a friend who would willingly come out to the barn if he invited her, that Nathan had fucked up and overdosed her and that she was now dead. He’d used the pictures of the two of them posed at the junkyard as proof and Nathan, memory a mess and so easily swayed, so reliant on him, had believed it immediately. 

Things had been stilted between them after that. He had hated the boy for ruining everything. His mind had dwelt with Rachel, her body, cold and still and unjudgmental. He’d had strange impulses to dig her up, to pose her again, to curl around her and take comfort in her serene embrace. Nathan could tell something was wrong and his mental health had begun to nosedive. Served the boy right. From then on everything Nathan did was just further proof of incompetence.

Perhaps he had become over judgemental, picking at every little thing than Nathan did that remotely annoyed him, but the boy was wearing out his welcome. He couldn’t bring himself to touch conscious Nathan, to let the boy touch him, and when he drugged him to make use of the boy’s body he found himself becoming rough, violent, leaving Nathan bruised and more than once bleeding. 

Then came Kate. Nathan was aware of his interest in her piety, purity enforced by religion. Nathan was jealous, he understood that now, that’s why when he requested that Nathan drug her and bring her to the Dark Room himself everything went wrong. He underdosed her, let her run around the party defiling herself, videoed her with his phone. 

Nathan had taken so long that he’d come looking only to find the boy leading Kate off campus making soothing noises about taking her to the hospital. If the boy had just drugged her properly he wouldn’t have needed to lie to her. Then, once he’d bundled the girl into his car, Nathan had showed him the video going on about how Kate wasn’t really as pure as he thought she was. It had been ridiculous. More jealousy, so transparent.

At least the video had come in handy. Once it became clear Kate remembered enough to possibly get them both in trouble he’d downloaded it off Nathan’s phone and uploaded it to the net, making sure the link was spread around school. The girl’s slutty conduct discredited her account and the resultant bullying almost led to her removing herself as a problem. If only Max Caulfield hadn’t gotten involved. 

In his anger at Nathan he must have said something that triggered the next mess with that blue haired Chloe, but all the boy had said that was coherent when he’d demanded an explanation as to what he was thinking attempting to emulate without either the required talent or comprehending the nuances of his work was that he was trying to understand. Trying to understand what? The limitations of his talent? That he’d never amount to anything that would impress anyone? That all he was was a scared, lonely, stupid child made to be used over and over by his betters?

It didn’t matter, none of it mattered, the clusterfuck caused by Nathan’s idiocy and Max’s interference was almost over. By the end of the night Nathan would be dead, either overdosed or hanged in response to his “guilt” over the “murder” of three of his classmates and the “molestation” of so many others. Max would become the pinnacle of his work so far on his magnum opus, the moment of her death captured for eternity on film. That Chloe disposed of before she could cause any more trouble.

Perhaps he could still take Victoria to San Francisco, let her stroll around galleries being praised, only to pass out in her hotel room after “sneaking too much self-congratulatory champagne” so he could finally fill her folder in peace without Nathan throwing childish tantrums at the thought of his precious best friend being in danger, even though what happened with Rachel was never going to happen again. It was an accident. 

Victoria would escape unscathed. He wouldn’t slip up and leave her cold and serene and unjudgmental, the vulgarity of her sexuality, her willingness to trade her flesh for favour, burnt away. Purity once more restored with the destruction of her tainted consciousness. No. He wouldn’t slip ever again, not after tonight, not after he’d cleaned up the mess Nathan had made. Not after Nathan. Not after Chloe. Not after Max. Not after Rachel. Not after Victoria. Not after…


End file.
